A Critical View of the National Student Survey as a Quality Indicator in Norwegian Higher Education

Abstract

Student surveys are an integral part of quality assessment in the education sector and play a vital role in the justification of policies and decisions on governmental, institutional and individual levels. Each year in Norway a governmental agency for quality assurance in education conducts a national survey inviting all registered second year bachelor’s and master’s students to provide online feedback on their perceived study quality. We discuss the limits of the results' interpretability in the light of previous research criticising the validity of student surveys for the assessment of educational quality in general and discuss in more detail the limitations in the chosen Norwegian example. This article aims to increase the awareness of these challenges and stimulate a science-based development of alternative assessment forms of educational quality. The relationship between the educational sector's core activity and the survey's focus is discussed; suggestions for paths to improvement are made. We argue further that the nationwide assessment lays bare the conceptual deficits that may be of equally high importance for educational system evaluations in other countries.